


Ineffable

by Smokeandblossoms



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28951614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeandblossoms/pseuds/Smokeandblossoms
Summary: Andrea was an unfortunate kind of beautiful. Such beautiful things were never meant to last, never meant to exist beyond a fleeting glance, but Miranda had never cared for permanence.
Relationships: Miranda Priestly & Andrea Sachs, Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs
Comments: 5
Kudos: 59





	Ineffable

The first encounter took place the night after Miranda’s divorce. 

Oh- the latter had been quite a success. The settlement had been met amicably from both sides, or as much as possible between her poking accusations and his constant bickering- but it was done now. Finished and long overdue, if she had any say to it. With such woes left behind in the past, the editor found herself indulging in a rare slice of satisfaction. 

For the first time in years, Runway was the farthest thing from mind. How strange. A siren wailed faintly in the distance, its echo feeding its own cries as she stood, silent. 

There would be no one waiting at home. The bed would be empty, as empty as it had been the last few months, now emptier still with the knowledge that it would remain that way indefinitely. The thought of such a change, however slow and painstaking its transition, was difficult to imagine, its precipitation bringing with it a smudge of dread as if watching rain fall from inside a well. Too much too quickly, and she’d find herself untethered from the very thing she wanted. 

That didn’t mean she couldn’t acknowledge opportunity when it arrived. Time was plentiful, she reminded herself, and tonight was hers to enjoy. 

“Where to, Miranda?” Mr. Milton had stopped a yard from where she stood. The driver sounded eager to help. It was his nature, and his efforts would have surely been appreciated had the vehicle not appeared so constricting all of a sudden. 

“I’ll walk.” 

“Are you- of course.” The windows had already begun to raise. “Enjoy your night, Miranda.” 

She didn’t reply. Watching, a touch rueful, as the car turned the corner of the parking lot and disappeared. 

It had become very late. The sky had drained of all its colour, rendered a dull and un-celebratory grey. The overcast evening had left behind a canvas of distortions, patchworks of stars peering through the sparse openings where the clouds had given way to the open atmosphere. She looked up at them now and peered back. 

A small flock of people had already gathered to cross the street when she made her way to the intersection. Like pigeons, they huddled together and took little notice of her. The air smelled cold and wet here. Cold enough for coats to be drawn tightly towards one’s body, for heads to tilt down towards the Earth from where they might be shielded from the wind, and for Miranda Priestly to walk through the streets of New York alone and unheeded. 

But where would she go? She could go anywhere. A museum, a theater. A door with only her name in it. The sudden influx of independence was dazzling, though it brought some concern. Had she truly lost so much without noticing?

The pedestrian sign changed colours. After some thought, she trudged on.

The cafe stood where it had the last time she’d visited. Small enough to fit inside one of the larger communal closets at Runway. Its body, shaped like a rail carriage, was framed perfectly between two larger buildings so that a passerby could walk past the street in the dark and be none the wiser to its existence. 

She reached to open the door. The metal stung like ice under her hand as she felt along its edges. After a minute of searching, her fingers encountered a small dip under the lock of the doorknob. Inches in width and thin enough to block her fingernail, prodding passerby hands to slip across its surface and continue along their blind journey. 

_There was nothing here to see_ , it seemed to say. _Best to move along._

She didn’t, though her breath caught for a moment as her card slid through. A long silence. She pushed it in deeper. Felt a slight resistance, a sharp click as if someone from inside had snapped it in half. The card ejected back into her hands, thankfully whole. 

Then the lock turned. 

Hinges groaned in protest when she pushed past the entrance, welcoming the sudden flood of warmth as she stepped inside. She felt the door fall shut from behind and eclipse her vision in a sharp lens of darkness. A moment later, her eyes adjusted.

Even knowing what to expect, the sight still caught her by surprise. 

The floor of the hall extended far into the distance. Small wooden tables were ordered carefully throughout the open space, ample room left between each seat. The wine bar hid at the very end of the lounge, a squarish block of wood above which a thin film of crystal shimmered as if alive from under the chandeliers. A few glanced to look up at the newest arrival before the pause of interest gradually melted back into polite disregard. 

“Miss Priestly,” a well-dressed man welcomed her. His smile touched his eyes as he peered down at the newest guest with unnerving familiarity. “It’s been a while since we’ve last had you here.” 

Five years, she wanted to say, but withheld. “Miranda, please. And I’m surprised that you remember.” 

“Of course,” he ushered her gently towards a table at the far right-hand side where another waiter had taken to lighting a candle. “We do not forget our customers. Would you like your usual table?” 

She told him that she would, waving aside his assistance as she seated herself. There was no menu, for anything- within reason- could be provided. After taking her order, the two men left without a word. 

Then silence. Stifling silence, different somehow from that which Miranda commanded within her own office at Runway, for intention played a great role in the ambience of any setting. Her office was quiet out of necessity, forced as it was. Here, the silence was preferred, coveted. 

In silence and in appearance, the place had changed very little since her last visit. Miranda took at the one-sided windows and the sepia walls, the generous decorating which lines along the upper straddle of the ceiling in thick, foreign scripts. There were sculptures and art lined at a more comfortable angle for the viewer. A painting nearest to the entrance where half a dozen naked bodies sat around a cluster of grapes, having aged in all the places where the paint had flecked off and the oils stained the varnish. 

A skilled connoisseur might see a well-made replica of a Carravagio. An even better one would recognize the original- its place reserved in any museum across the world and worth millions. Its exact value, for someone sitting across from it, hardly mattered. The real fortune sat inside these walls not along it; on any given day at any given hour, there would be enough wealth pooled between the inhabitants of this room to fund all of New York’s prospects for weeks to come. 

“Miranda, your tea.” A cup was placed before her. The liquid was colourless in the darkness. “Enjoy.” 

And then there she was, alone once again. The porcelain warmed her fingers as she brought it to her lips. The smell was sweet and bitter, but just so. Utensils shone in the bleak light. A fork, a knife, a line of spoons arranged across the perimeter of the table cloth. 

As she sat sipping away, Miranda took a moment to scan the faces nearest to her. At her right, she recognized the president of the NSH Bank, Howell Frankford, sitting across from who Miranda could only imagine was his wife or his mistress. At the far end was who appeared to be Ismael Kaji, a corporate standout to whose wedding the editor had been cordially invited to few months prior, and whom she could now recognize by the sharp slant of his forehead which gleamed most alarmingly in the candlelight. His few companions were all turned away from her. 

They were all here for the same reason. Privacy would always have its demand. And to those you needed it the most, there was no price too high to acquire it. 

Here, inside these walls, Miranda Priestly did not exist. Here, her name did not carry any weight. Her face shone in plain sight, visible to any who dared glance her way. And yet, despite this strange intimacy which would prove unpleasant in most circumstances, the lingering weight in her chest had all but dissolved, a hill crumbling to silt with every sip of her warm tea as she hid in the solemn light as a common specter. 

Her dessert arrived in the midst of her observations. Sussex pudding, she’d asked for. An old favorite from when she’d been a child, now seeming all the more appropriate to enjoy. 

There was a certain pleasure in celebrating something alone. Secretive almost, but no less rewarding. Miranda was perfectly fine talking to no one in this room, glad, almost, for the reprieve of forced interaction out of necessity or unearned respect. In fact, she would have been perfectly content with spending the rest of her night in exactly this manner, all but blissfully undisturbed. 

Until her eyes landed on her. 

A young woman sitting far away. The object of her focus was seated far away enough to remain all but hidden, the faintest light from the far windows touching her silhouette- the curve of her neck, the straight line of her back, her legs. 

_Beautiful._ The thought flew past Miranda’s mind. She shook her head and attempted to resume eating. 

From the side, she watched as the woman turned just slightly in her direction, as if having sensed her thoughts. Then, without any reason and eyes still turned away, smiled. 

Her grip on the fork loosened _._ Metal struck porcelain, the sound enough to travel across the small room and bring attention to those nearby. Heads lifted at the disturbance, one pair of eyes remaining unwavering on her face for far longer than the others as she fought the urge to squirm in place like some reprimanded child. 

The woman looked away and the editor’s body loosened with relief. 

She looked back up to an empty audience. When she searched for the woman a moment later, she had turned completely to face Miranda, and the latter, despite her curiosity, felt strangely afraid to look back. 

The strength of her reaction surprised even herself. A most unbecoming display, leaving her prickling with of caution. Something about the moment aroused the faintest stirrings of memory in Miranda, a web spun between the outstretched terrain of years now hanging suspended in a single moment of clarity. 

It must have been many years ago, back when Caroline and Cassidy were both beginning their elementary schooling, when a young boy had joined the classroom. He’d been home-schooled for the entirety of his life, and had taken the opportunity to ask questions on things one would assume of the most obvious nature. Innocent inquiries. And in that moment, as if drawn by some primitive biological instinct, everyone in the nearest vicinity was suddenly brought to the conclusion that this boy wasn’t from here. He was something different and unwelcome, perhaps only in a trivial nature, but it was enough for those, even herself, to develop a certain wariness around the child. A harmless child, but again, they were _them_ and he was _other_. 

Like the boy, this woman too, was other. 

Everyone in the room must have felt it to some degree, for she had been afforded a generous place in the corner of the room to claim as her own. Like some obscure spider living behind a bedroom cupboard, having made space in the shadows and out of sight where it would remain to serve the comforts of both parties. 

Miranda watched from the corner of her eye. 

Ever since the encounter with the boy, Miranda had gone on to work with thousands of more people throughout her career. Musicians, artists, the lowest of politicians and greatest of speakers. Every now and then, she’d meet someone who operated just a little differently, their ideas and movements pervading a sense of innate foreignness. It could be a manner of confidence, an approach to a solution, or even a certain framing of a sentence. 

She liked to think herself well acquainted with such characters, made at ease by the nature of her profession. But here, such comfort did not exist. In this room, Miranda Priestly was no less and no greater than Caravaggio himself, no more special than all the nameless faces he’d painted, and somehow, utterly bewitched by this strange girl. 

By now, the thin pastry of her dessert had all but collapsed, turned into a pool of syrup at the very first drag of the knife. She set it aside for a moment and called for a waiter. 

A young man arrived immediately. “Yes, ma’am?” 

She pointed vaguely in the direction of the woman. “Who is she?” A head turned over to catch her finger- “oh, don’t stare so _obviously_. Have you no sense of discretion?” Then, quieter, “the one sitting in the corner. Away from the windows.” 

A moment of pause. “She didn’t say. Would you like me to ask?” 

Absolutely not. “Of course not,” she spat quietly, surprising herself by the sudden surge of panic, then fell silent. “Never you mind then,” she patted his hand once, then withdrew. “Go on and bring me something else- a coffee. Yes, a coffee. And take away the dessert, dear.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

It was hardly a minute of conversation that had taken place between herself and the man. A dozen words woven between with brief moments of silence. Not nearly enough for a person to walk past her table at a dignified pace, but by the time the server had left with her plate and Miranda’s attention had been brought back to the stranger, the table was empty and the woman was gone. 


End file.
